What was claimed
Primark is giving away free hampers to celebrate its birthday to anyone who ‘likes’ and comments on certain Facebook posts.
Our verdict
False. This is not a genuine offer from the company.
Primark isn’t giving away hampers to people to celebrate its birthday
A number of Facebook posts have falsely claimed that Primark is giving away free hampers to celebrate the retail chain’s birthday.
One of the posts says: "Primark is celebrating its 60th Birthday with a free hamper of goodies for everyone who hits like and says: Sixty.”
It features a photo of what appear to be Primark staff holding a hamper in a store, strongly implying that the promotion is from Primark itself.
Other posts are similar but some claim the company is 50 rather than 60 years old.
Neither is correct. The company started life in Dublin in 1969 under the name Penneys. The first UK store was opened in Derby in 1973 but a trademark conflict with US retailer J C Penney meant another name needed to be found and this and subsequent UK stores were rebranded. The store first became known as Primark in September 1974, 51 years ago.
No free hamper offer appears on the official Primark website and the company has confirmed to Full Fact that the offers mentioned in the Facebook posts are not genuine promotions from Primark.
We’ve previously seen many social media posts sharing fake offers supposedly from retailers such as Marks & Spencer, Argos and Amazon.
Join 72,953 people who trust us to check the facts
Sign up to get weekly updates on politics, immigration, health and more.
Subscribe to weekly email newsletters from Full Fact for updates on politics, immigration, health and more. Our fact checks are free to read but not to produce, so you will also get occasional emails about fundraising and other ways you can help. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy.
It’s always worth checking posts sharing offers that seem too good to be true. One way to verify them is to see whether the offer has been shared by the company’s official social media page—this will often have more followers, a verified blue tick on platforms like Facebook or Instagram and a longer post history.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Primark has confirmed this is not a genuine offer from the company.